this little life of mine

While our house is being painted and it's all sealed up and stuff, mom and I took off for the day. We stopped at Sbux for coffee and breakfast goodies, then went to the Atascadero Lake Park for a walk. First we stopped by the new Faces of Freedom Veteran's Memorial.

It was very sad to see the portrait of an 18-year old who was killed over in Iraq. His parents must've put that memorial up last Monday.

The sky was a bit overcast at first, but eventually the sun poked out and it became pretty warm. There were lots of cute critters around the lake. I got a shot of the swan, a beautiful mallard duck and a heron, and a mama duck and her two fuzzy babies:

After our walk, we drove over to Morro Bay. The weather there was perfect: overcast and slightly cool, but not uncomfortably so.

There are tons of fun and interesting shops and artsy galleries in Morro Bay, but our favourite place to visit is The Garden Gallery. We saw some wonderful succulent plantings that we think might work in our future garden makeover, and I totally fell in LOVE with some awesome garden art:

Later we had lunch at The Galley restaurant. Mom and I split a plate of delicious fish tacos and Caesar salad and each had a glass of Savignon Blanc.

Unfortunately after we the left the restaurant and were looking through another gallery (Fiona Bleu, one of my favourites), I was suddenly overwhelmed with nausea. Since mom and I ate exactly the same thing for lunch, we concluded it wasn't the food (and thank God, because if we'd both been sick that would have sucked a LOT more!). We decided that it had to be the ginormous glass of Savignon Blanc.

The glasses they served the wine in were HUGE and between the two of us I think we ended up drinking half a bottle of wine! And, aapparently I can't hold my liquor anymore. Which sucks, because I already gave up cigarettes and junk food and what? Now I have to give up wine as well? What am I going to do for a vice then?!? Gah!

Ahem. Anyway, we sat for a while to let my stomach settle then wandered around some more, periodically sitting on bench until my stomach stopped roiling. After about a half hour, the nausea passed, but I was pretty wiped out (And, it turns out, badly sunburned despite the sun never actually coming out. Of course I wasn't wearing sunscreen nor did I wear a hat, so I guess it's my own damn fault.), so we picked up some salt water taffy (a MUST for any beach trip regardless of how we're feeling!), then headed for home.

All-in-all it was a really good day - except for the sunburn and the upset tummy, which is much better now, thanks for asking. So, how was YOUR weekend?!?

I was in the mood for a new summer fragrance, so I walked over to Sephora on my lunch break today to test out some new scents. I tested Jean-Paul Gaultier's Classique Summer (I had a version of this a couple years ago and really liked it), Burberry Classic Summer (I've used Burberry's Brit and The Beat and loved both), Issey Miyake L'Eau d'Issey Summer, and Kenzo d'Ete Eau De Parfume. The first two I really liked and the last two stank to high heaven and NOT in a good way. After eliminating the last two, I sprayed the Gaultier on one arm and the Burberry on the other. I wandered around the store for a while, periodically sniffing each scent to see which I liked better. In the end I couldn't decide and I had to get back to work, so I bought both:

 Okay, I'm ready, now: Bring on Summer!!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read

2. Open to a random page

3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser today comes from page 8 of Saving Juliet by Suzanne Selfors (I just started the book this morning on the bus, and yes, I'm cheating by posting more than two sentences.). Enjoy!

I swallowed against the building bile. The actor who played the Prince of Verona perpared for his entrace. He stretched his legs, cleared his throat, then patted me on the head. "Poor little thing," he whispered.  

In preparation of getting our house painted (probably next weekend), mom and I chopped down a couple overgrown bushes next to the house. Personally I think it looks a LOT better. I wanted to get rid of those things for some time. We're keeping the tree, the echinacea, day lilies, and the smaller bushes for now, but eventually we're going to take most everything out and redo this whole area with river rock in the hopes of preventing flooding when, er, I mean if it ever rains again.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

We moved our Earthbox garden to the backyard again this year to prevent any damage from the power washing and painting. But first I got a few pics:

The zucchini is HUGE already. We're wishing we'd just put it in the box by itself and not added the pepper:

 And there's some baby zucchinis in there:

Our two tomato plants are growing a lot, too, although the Big Boys look better than the Early Girls:

Our other two pepper plants look kinda tiny compared to the one with the zucchini, but the little buds are getting bigger, so I'm sure they're fine.

Generally everything looks really good. Except the lawn, which is dying, but The Powers That Be put massive restrictions on watering, so there's not a whole lot we can do about that. I expect we'll do our best, but if it dies, we'll just replace it either this fall or next spring. It's mostly overrun with crabgrass anyway.

Day trip to Cambria with a stop at Moonstone Beach to walk along the boardwalk and watch the waves.

My brand-new, shiny 25th Anniversary Edition Fossil water watch.

It has been one hell of a week. I'm SO glad it's over AND that it's a three-day weekend!  I can't say much, but I might have lost a friend. I'm not sure. Maybe I never had this friend to begin with; maybe it was all just a ruse. Who knows? All I know is I can't wait to get home and have a BIG glass of Chardonnay!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read

2. Open to a random page

3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser this week comes from page 36 of Exodus by Julie Bertagna:

When Tain was a boy, the Arctic meltdown turned the northern seas cold and Wing suffered biting ice-winds all year round, though the rest of the world was warming up. The polar ice sheets that once reflected the sun's rays back into space must have shrunk drastically, reasons Tain, and Wing bakes in burning summers now that heat is trapped on Earth.

Yesterday afternoon our neighbour who's going to be painting our house stopped by with paint chips of the original house colours as well as a few other options. We decided to just go with what we already had - although we'll be changing the accent colour because we chose poorly last time.

So the house itself will be Cloud Nine and the accent is Smoked Oyster. They're both a kind of greyish blue. I believe the accent was originally the darker colour on the bottom (Grayling), but it faded so badly we decided to go one lighter this time. It'll be nice to have this done and not have to worry about it for another 12 years!